26 Deductions
by Blossomwitch
Summary: A series of unconnected vignettes between John and Sherlock in response to an alphabet prompt list. Some chapters friendship, some chapters romance. Latest chapter G: John may have a slightly greater than average attraction to things that gleam. And the way Sherlock's eyes shine when he's about to crack the case, well, there's a chance it's taking over John's life.
1. A: Apprehensive, Alibi

(A/N: Getting my feet wet in the Sherlock fandom with an alphabet set of prompts created by Written Sparks! Each letter has two prompts, either or both of which can be used; I am going to try to use both as often as I can. Since the chapters will be short, I will try to update frequently.)

_**A: Apprehensive /Alibi**_

The first time Sherlock says "John, I need an alibi," all John can think of is Sergeant Donovan's dire prediction that one day, it will be Sherlock leaving the bodies at the crime scenes. John doesn't tell Sherlock no, exactly, but he makes such a mess of things that it's months before Sherlock makes another unexplained request for an alibi.

By then John's confident that Sherlock's not going to go psycho killer on them, but he's got other worries. Worries about drug habits, and worries about giving an inch and having not so much as a mile but the length of the Atlantic Ocean taken. So he fumbles his way through another awkward rejection, and Sherlock seems to get the picture: that John, despite being the person he spends the most time with, is not the right person to ask to cover for him.

After two years of one-sided conversations next to the ultimate alibi - a gravestone - John hopes, prays, that Sherlock will ask him for an alibi again someday. He would give a different answer now. But Sherlock doesn't ask.


	2. B: Barricade, Blossom

(A/N: Can't remember if I said this before, but to clarify these ficlets are not connected to each other, just a series of observations.)

B: Barricade /Blossom

Lestrade's a patient man. He's willing to put time and energy into something (or someone) if he thinks that they might blossom someday. His wife, on days that she's talking to him, tells him he should quit police work and become a gardener. His marriage takes a lot of work, but he doesn't give up. And he doesn't give up on Sherlock Holmes, either. Lestrade can see that the man's a genius, and it's worth the inconvenience to get the kind of results Sherlock can get. But there's more to it than that. Lestrade thinks Sherlock can get better, someday.  
So he spends five years acting as a barricade between Sherlock and the rest of Scotland Yard: soaking up the animosity that spews in both directions, searching for the right amount of space to give Sherlock, knowing that too much will be as damaging as too little. Trying to hold on to his diminishing faith that things will fall into place.  
One night, Lestrade realizes he's never had what Sherlock needed. He realizes this the night the serial suicide killer is gunned down by a mystery shooter. Sherlock is in the middle of describing the shooter to Lestrade when he apruptly stops, tells Lestrade to ignore him (a sentence he has never uttered in his life) and then strides off, every iota of his attention fixed on that fellow who just moved in with him, John Watson. Who fits the profile Sherlock just told Lestrade to forget. Who got here remarkably fast. Who certainly wouldn't be charged for this (the shooter was clearly acting in defense of Sherlock's life), and Sherlock must know it. But Sherlock has stopped showing off, lied in a way that makes himself look bad, and told other people to ignore him, all to keep John from having to make a statement.  
Lestrade does what he can for Sherlock: he keeps what he knows to himself, and quietly makes sure John has access to every place Sherlock does. And a series of extraordinary things begin to happen.  
Sherlock starts laughing. Oh, he laughed before, but invariably at other people's mistakes; now he and John are prone to bursting into inappropriate, conspiratorial sniggering at the worst possible moments. He loses the subtle tension of a man constantly under attack, and even appears relaxed on occasion. Lestrade has personally observed Sherlock apologize three times, admit to being wrong twice, and twice acquiesce to mundane and domestic demands such as replacing household goods that were sacrificed to an impromptu experiment. He also smiles a lot. He still smiles all the times he would've before, like when he's figured out a clue or when he's trying to get his way, but he smiles other times. When it's time to go home. When he's lost in his work, humming to himself. At people's jokes. At John.  
After five long, patient years, Sherlock is blossoming.


	3. C: Curiosity, Capsize

A/N: Sorry these have all been narrative so far; as I get more familiar with this fandom and pin down the characterizations I will try for a more active voice. :)

**C: Curiosity/Capsize**

Curiosity is not one of John's more prominent traits. He's learned to roll with the punches, and in the military he learned to shut up and follow orders. Both those skills are vital for getting along with Sherlock.

But when his daily life starts to involve casual government abductions, not to mention body parts turning up in the vegetable drawer, John's sense of curiosity is piqued. And when he realizes that Sherlock is so accustomed to his presence that John can get away with rocking the boat a little, John starts getting a little impertinent with his questions.

_Why have you let Mrs. Hudson in, when you push most people away?_ (The answer turns out to have very little to do with Mrs. Hudson and a great deal to do with Sherlock, although her meringue cookies make it in there somewhere.)

_What'd that bloke Sebastian mean about everyone hating you at uni?_ (Turns out, that. Precisely and exactly that. Sherlock says he wasn't as careful about other people's feelings back then as he is now. John can barely imagine.)

_Be straight with me about the drugs, just once, give me an honest answer._ (A failed experiment in the university years; failed not because he hadn't learned from it, but because of the unforeseen result of a crippling addiction. Sherlock won't acknowledge the correlation between the timing of the experiment and the crippling boredom and isolation he felt at uni, but he doesn't have to. John sees it anyway.)

_What's the deal with you and Mycroft anyway? Tell me it's not just petty sibling stuff._ (This answer takes some work to get out of him; Sherlock is slow to open up about Mycroft, but one late night he does and it's John who backs out of the conversation two hours later. John says forget it, he's changed his mind, he no longer wants to know the things Mycroft did as a teenager because he still has to look the man in the eye occasionally.)

_And why, exactly, do you need me around on cases?_ (To toss him pens, call him brilliant, and insulate him from the Andersons and the Donovans of the world, in that order. Apparently Sherlock considers pens a high priority.)

_Why does everyone who knows you think we're a couple?_

_C'mon, you're not going to answer that one? Why do people think we're a couple?_

(Sherlock walks up to him, right up to him, past punching distance into kissing distance but does neither of those things. Just stares at him for a moment, that really high-intensity focused look he gets sometimes, and says _Because_. He turns away and walks out of the room, down the stairs, out the door. John has to reorder his mental map of their relationship. He's been indulging his curiosity freely for awhile now, but he knows now that some things are still off limits. John knows he's found the one thing that can capsize them.)


	4. D: Defiant, Daunting

A/N: _So that's a big ol' "nope" on the active voice thing; enjoy some more narrative. _  
_I had a little trouble figuring out how I wanted to respond to this prompt and it strayed somewhat; have to admit I'm not completely happy with it, but I hope it works for you._

**D: Defiant/Daunting**

The fact of the matter was, the only relationship Sherlock had ever considered himself to be in was with Mycroft. Everything else, every_one_ else, was either an obstacle or a helpmeet, and in either case just an object to be manipulated. This was because other people were so different from him as to be almost alien (a viewpoint, he later realized, which he had learned almost solely from Mycroft in the first place).  
But Mycroft didn't love the danger of a footrace across London or the rush of solving things at the last minute. He didn't think Sherlock was smart, and Sherlock couldn't make him laugh. John Watson might have had a perfectly ordinary brain, but there were parts of him that Sherlock recognized instantly. And he thought, _well, why not?_

He learned _why not_ very quickly.

Having never had a relationship with anyone but his brother, and the societal definition of "brothers" already being fairly well mapped out, Sherlock found himself completely unprepared to define a new relationship with a new person. And there was something very puzzling, something indefinable, about John himself. He was completely normal, but Sherlock was still interested in him. Sherlock had an obsessive personality, but his obsessions changed frequently; as soon as he solved all the mysteries and found out all the interesting parts about someone, he would move on. It was what most people called being an asshole, but Sherlock couldn't understand how he could be expected to act any other way. Just as he couldn't understand how John, who by rights he should have deduced everything he could ever want to know about within the first 24 hours, became a subject he couldn't get off of. It wasn't enough to declare themselves friends, give him a key to the flat, and be done with it. Sherlock found himself compulsively stealing John's laptop (without knowing why he was doing it), examining John's mail before it got to John, getting in the habit of occasionally following John around town without John's knowledge. He could tell from John's first step on the stairs each morning how he'd slept, tell from the sound of his vowels where he grew up, and from the state of his shirt how many patients he saw at the surgery.

And what bothered Sherlock about all that is that he could tell those things about anybody. He wanted to know something about John, have something about John, that he didn't know or have with other people. How did normal people do it? When you knew someone was important, how were you supposed to go from the first realization of importance to knowing _how_ they were important, and _why_, and what you needed from them?

He might have lowered his pride and asked John how one was supposed to do this, but the lack of normal relationships in John's life proved that he didn't know how, either. So all Sherlock could do was continue taking notes on how worn each pair of John's shoes were, and how long it took him to eat his meals, and at what point he gave up changing the password on his laptop, and hope that somewhere in his collection of facts about John Watson some sort of synergy would occur and he would understand why he was endlessly fascinated by these things.


	5. E: Echo, Enchanted

_(A/N: So... not a lot of "enchanted," more "echo," though "enchanted" is certainly there in subtext. But I did find a more active tone finally and I'm really pleased with this one, so yay!)_

**E: Echo/Enchanted**

"What did you say?"

Sherlock, comfortably ensconced in the couch, looked up in surprise. John, reading a magazine in his chair by the fire, was giving him a strange look. "I said you're wrong," Sherlock repeated.

"How can I be wrong?" John said. "I haven't said anything. Or done anything."

"You just said she wouldn't have given her brother a key to the flat because they didn't get along. But someone recently arrived to the city-"

"Sherlock, _I didn't say anything_." John's expression was split between alarm and concern; also the wrinkle in his forehead that meant he was thinking. No doubt mentally dusting off his medical training and sorting through the potential causes of auditory hallucinations. Sherlock found the explanation much faster. "Ah. It wasn't you, then; I must have been talking to the you that I talk to when you aren't here." Sherlock frowned. "But you are here."

John may or may not have answered; Sherlock wasn't paying attention anymore. He went into his mind palace. Currently it looked like 221 B Baker Street, because he had been accessing things that he kept there. The resemblance was perfect-down to a Mind Palace John sitting exactly where Real John was sitting, in his armchair. "What are you doing here?" Sherlock asked, perplexed.

"I live here, you berk," Mind Palace John said.

"No you don't. Nobody lives here. I came here to access the the file on lockpicking, I don't need you for that." He must have accidentally pulled John up to bounce ideas off of while he was looking for the file, but it was unnerving that he hadn't realized it. "Get out, John."

"Excuse me?"

Sherlock blinked, feeling a headache coming on. He must have spoken out loud again; it was Real John who had answered him, and with a certain level of indignation at that. "Not you!"

"Then who are you talking to?!" John's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You didn't rename the skull, did you?"

"I _told_ you, I'm talking to the you that I talk to when you're not here. In my mind palace."

"You mean you actually made a copy of me in your mind palace?" John asked, seeming mildly surprised. "I always thought you just didn't notice whether I was here or not."

"That's ridiculous, of course I notice."

John frowned. "Then how is it you can't remember I don't actually know the things you've said to yourself in your mind palace while I'm not here?"

"Well I can't be expected to keep the two of you straight! Now keep quiet, it's very irritating talking to both of you at once." Sherlock closed his eyes, even though he could easily access the mind palace with his eyes open, hoping it would deter Real John from talking.

It would have been much less disconcerting going back and forth if Mind Palace John and Real John hadn't been sitting in exactly the same place. But Mind Palace John did not have a magazine; also, he was waiting to talk to Sherlock with an expression of easy confidence, while Real John was starting to get in a huff. "Now, what did you mean you live here?" Sherlock said to Mind Palace John. "No one lives here."

"No? Awful crowded in that case. Mycroft's here nearly every day."

"How do you-never mind, that's not the point. I pull people up in here, just like any other information, when I'm working on a specific problem that I need to hear their voice on. When I don't need them anymore I put them away."

"Well, maybe you need me all the time."

"Impossible."

Real John interjected. "You do realize you're mumbling to yourself over there, don't you? What's impossible?"

"What?" Sherlock exclaimed, opening his eyes. "Oh, for heaven's sake, stop interrupting!"

"Interrupting a man's conversation with himself," Real John muttered.

"It's not with myself, it's with you. Not you-you, Mind Palace you."

John tossed his magazine onto the side table and stood up, irritation and exasperation written in every line of his face. "Why are you arguing with some pretend version of me in your head when we're sitting next to each other?"

"Because I don't know why you're there. Now will you please _shut up_?"

Real John didn't say anything else. Sherlock closed his eyes again, and found Mind Palace John still in the armchair. "Stubborn, are we?" Mind Palace John said.

"I didn't consciously leave you here," Sherlock told him.

"Nah. And Sherlock Holmes never does anything subconsciously."

"No, I do not. At least not in here."

"You just prefer to think out loud, and you don't like doing it to an empty room. I don't draw as many strange looks as the skull."

"Yes. That's it," Sherlock said, feeling the pieces of the puzzle connect. John's function as "person who listens" must have been so strongly ingrained on Sherlock's brain that John had popped up when Sherlock hadn't meant to bring him, just because Sherlock was mulling things over.

Mind Palace John shook his head. "Sherlock, has it ever occurred to you that saying 'I like to talk, and I prefer for a person to be there when I do' is the same as saying 'I'm lonely, will you listen to me?'"

"...No, it hasn't."

"You probably think my being here all the time is some big mystery, or an error you need to correct. I'm here because you're lonely. I will always be here, because you will always want someone to listen to you and believe you, even in the privacy of your own mind. I won't get in the way of your all-important Work. I'll just be here. Specifically, right now, in my room. Because I believe you have something else to do."

Mind Palace John unfolded himself from his armchair and strolled out of the room. Sherlock sat there for a moment, staring at his own knees, before leaving the mind palace. It was really very disconcerting, everything being so very much the same; only Real John was now at the table, typing on his laptop. Possibly a passive-aggressive blog about his not-entirely-sane flatmate. When he noticed Sherlock watching him, Real John asked, "Did we have a row? You and fake me?"

"No."

John looked back at what he was typing. After a moment he noticed Sherlock was still watching him. "What? You have something you want to say to the real me instead of talking to yourself?"

A mental voice whispered, _The same as saying 'I'm lonely.'_ "Yes."

"...So what it is then?"

"I don't know yet. Give me a minute. I'll think of something."


	6. F: Fleeting, Flutter

_(A/N: Originally I meant for them all to be brief sketches like this, so I could update quickly, but things never go as planned. ^ ^)_

**F: Fleeting, Flutter**

John likes to feel his heart pound. He's loved it ever since he was a kid and he first discovered football, and then rugby, and then boxing. Maybe it's part of why he's crap at relationships: because he doesn't understand those softer moments, when your heart isn't pounding, but sighing or yearning or swooning or breaking. John doesn't sit well with those moments. Give him the rush of blood in his ears, the adrenaline flooding his limbs, the shaking aftermath. Give him a gun and a uniform. And when those things are taken away (except he keeps the gun), give him footraces across London and shots fired in the dark. Sherlock keeps John's heart pounding.

When John first hears Sherlock playing the violin, first looks up to see Sherlock looking out the window and swaying, half-dancing with the bow, John's heart does not pound. There's a sort of flutter instead - something akin to the feeling of jumping out of an airplane, mixed up with the feeling of looking into a beautiful girl's eyes and knowing she does not love him. It is intense but fleeting, and when it is gone John tells himself it was a reaction to the music (even though he's never liked any piece of music written before 1960 in his life), and not a reaction to the way Sherlock looked playing it. He even believes it.

Until it happens again.


	7. G: Glory, Gleam

_(A/N: Back from break [me, not the show, unfortunately]. Thanks to my new beta readers hqri and ThePrincessOfDarkness!)_

**G: Glory/Gleam**

John Watson thinks of himself as a pretty typical bloke. He would guess that others think of him that way, too. His likes, dislikes, wants, and needs - all are within the ordinary. The things John loves, however, can be summed up in a list of things that _gleam_:

The freshly polished buttons of an army captain's dress uniform. The newly oiled barrel of an army issue gun. The brass headstand of his own bed in his own room with the morning sun on it. A woman's glossy hair reflecting restaurant candlelight.

And Sherlock's eyes when he's just figured out the key to a case but isn't going to explain himself for two hours yet.

The human attraction to things that shine is universal. John has even heard it said that it's evolutionary, something to do with nomadic ancestors finding water by the way it sparkles in the sun. So he doesn't think it's strange to organize his wants this way: his uniform, his gun, his bed, a girl, his best friend. Glory and community, protection and security, rest and comfort, romance and sex, belonging and purpose.

But dates get cancelled because of Sherlock. Sometimes he doesn't see his bed for days. His uniform was already little more than a keepsake, because of the injury that put him in Sherlock's path in the first place, but thank God for the gun; it has saved both their lives so many times now.

Sherlock's expression when he finds a puzzle, when he invites John to come with him, has come to overpower every other thing that shines in John's life. And between one day and the next, between the eyeballs in the kitchen and the casual visits from the British Government, John realizes that he is not now, and will never again, be normal.


End file.
